


Becomes the Color

by therewasagirl



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Anxiety, Depression, F/F, F/M, Laurel-centric, M/M, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, canon-compliant s1-s2, mostly canon compliant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-08
Updated: 2016-09-10
Packaged: 2018-08-12 21:14:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7949410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therewasagirl/pseuds/therewasagirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>v.intr.<br/>To grow or come to be, come into existence, undergo change or development</p><p>v.tr.<br/>1. To be appropriate or suitable<br/>2. To show to advantage; look good with/in:  </p><p>Phrasal Verb: To be the fate of; happen to</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sense of Place

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starrystorms](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starrystorms/gifts), [minachandler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/minachandler/gifts).



> I promised i wouldn't do this. that i woudlnt post this story until i was don writing it, and im not done. but i needed nice things in my life so i decided to post this anyway. enjoy. 
> 
> some info: this is laurel lance's story, her life and struggles and journey, following canon and then derailing off it at some point. please remember as you read, that it's a heavily pov-influenced story and that one thing said in one point of it, might not be true in another further down the read. hopefully. im looking to let laurel change a bit, you know.  
> also, again, heavy warnings for just about everything, from violence to verbal abuse, drugs and alcohol abuse, depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts and tendencies. all the works. please, be warned. i will provide at the end notes of the chapter, a summary of the chapter itself - very short, concise and dry - so that if you feel the need to skip, you can, but won't miss anything essential from the plot.  
> there will be appropriate warnings for every chapter, i promise.
> 
> ps: laurel and sara will be race-bent multiple times throughout the story.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prologue: 
> 
> “My ears hear what others cannot hear. Small, faraway things people cannot normally see are visible to me. These senses are the fruits of a lifetime of longing. Longing to be rescued. To be completed.  
> Just as the skirt needs the wind to billow, I'm not formed by things that are of myself alone. I wear my father's belt tied around my mother's blouse. And shoes which are from my uncle.  
> This is me. Just as a flower does not choose its color... we are not responsible for what we have come to be. Only once you realize this do you become free.” 
> 
> \- India Stoker, from the movie 'Stoker', Wentworth Miller

 " _Butterflies ,_  
_the floating parts of flowers_  
_Sunset ,_  
_the gentlest kind of absence .."_

_\-  Miral_

## 

She only remembers fractions of her childhood. Picture-frame moments, never whole stories.

She remembers their weekends traveling to nearby lakes, beaches. She used to love the water and Sara loved nature, so their parents made sure they got plenty of both. She remembers a pine forest they used to go to every other weekend. Hunting the fallen pinecones she and Sara used to pick from the ground and try to smash open with rocks to get to the seeds inside. She bruised her own fingers once or twice that way – even lost a fingernail. Their parents used to spread a blanket on the ground, under the cool shade of the pines and they would have a big picnic.

Sara and her would spend as much time as they could playing in the water, making sandcastles or encasing their legs into sand shape as fishtails.

She remembers Sara got lost once. They were eating one moment – Laurel making a fuss about apples because they were her favorites and Sara had eaten the last one – and then the next moment her parents looked up and Sara was gone. Just like that. Laurel hadn’t understood at the time why her mother grabbed her hand and she had her father split up in different directions without even saying a word. But when her mother started calling for Sara, Laurel did too, and her heart had started beating faster the more nervous and afraid her mother had sounded.

They found Sara about five minutes later, wandering around slowly, watching the tree-line with wide worried eyes, little hands wringing together.

Laurel ran to her before her mom did, and Sara… she hasn’t been crying before. She’d almost looked calm, even though the second Laurel looked at her she knew her sister was scared. But once Sara saw them, once Laurel ran to her and took her hands, that’s when she started crying. She pushed laurel away and their mother too, big tears running down her face.

‘ _How could you leave me?_ ’

And it was in that moment, with all the strength of her five year old heart, that Laurel promised she would never ever leave her sister alone again.

-

Laurel stumbles on a prickly shrub along the small sand dunes and she notices something colorful moving along the greens. She crouches down, hands moving her hair behind her ears. Smiles.

“Sara! _Sara_ , come look at this!”

Sara comes up the dune running and smiling wide, a streak of dirt smudged on her face, thin new hair plastered on her forehead and the sides of her face because of the sweat.

“What?”

Laurel lifts up her hand and there, crawling its way up her long middle finger, there’s a tiny red ladybug.

“Oooh! I _love_ ladybugs.”

Laurel smiles, the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth. “I know.”

Sara reaches over and places the tip of finger with Laurel’s, so that the little bug can crawl over. It flutters its wings as if to fly away and Sara mutters ‘no, no, wait’ under her breath, biting her lower lip, her whole face a picture of concentration.

And then it breaks into a thousand pieces when she smiles as wide as her mouth will let her. “It tickles.”

“Yeah?”

Sara giggles, a bell-like sounds of infancy still alive in a body that is on the very tip of leaving childhood behind.

Sara points her fingers towards the sky and when the ladybug reaches the very tip, she flaps her wings again, so thin they look transparent.

“Are her wings folded?” Sara asks, nearing her face to the insect so much she goes a bit cross-eyed.

“Don’t worry, she’s ok.”

Sara only frowns more though, ‘cause the ladybug tries again and fails to take off again, landing on the back of Sara’s palm instead.

“I don’t think she can fly…”

“You’re the worst at patience.” Laurel says with an eye-roll. Sara makes a face at her, but gets the message and just waits for it.

The ladybug climbs its way to the tip of her pinkie this time and it’s kinda funny the way they are both huddled there waiting for the tiny thing to take flight, but it’s even funnier, in Laurel’s opinion, the way Sara is so invested, biting her lip and pulling faces, leaning her body the way she thinks the ladybug should go, as if that’ll help the little bug take off.

When it finally does, Sara gasps loudly and then squeals in delight. They both follow the ladybug’s flight until she’s too far away to see anymore.

And then when the little thing is gone, Sara pulls Laurel up and drags her to see the nest of little turtles she thinks she found a little further up the coast, a whole new delight overtaking her horizon and overshadowing everything else.

- 

When Laurel was fifteen and Sara thirteen, Sara went through a growth spurt so quick that out of town relatives who didn’t see her that often swore she must have grown up overnight. Laurel would roll her eyes at that – she’d been around for every centimeter of that growth, it didn’t seem sudden at all to her. Sure, Sara was a bit taller and more gangly-looking now, like her body hadn’t caught up with her stretching bones yet, but unlike the newborn colts Sara resembled - all twiggy legs, knees and elbows - her sister was graceful  and sure of her every step ever since she’d been three years old.

The change had been a bit awkward though. Growing pains, so to speak. Like that one time when Laurel made the mistake of calling Sara’s budding breasts ‘mosquito bites’. …it hadn’t been her best moment.

Sara had snarled at her, biting back and getting personal, which hurt, but that hadn’t really been the problem. Sara’s anger Laurel could handle, but the truth of her sister’s hurt feelings had been in her wide shimmery eyes – which made Laurel feel like shit and dampened the her defensiveness very quickly. But she hadn’t known how to say sorry after a screaming fight that big. So Laurel made a point to only say nice things about her sister’s body after that. ( _Though Sara’s face at hearing them made Laurel think her sister never really believed she meant them_ )

The point is, there were about eleven months within the space of two years, during which their bodies allowed the Lance sisters to meet in the middle. Sara caught up with Laurel’s height and though not of the same built, they wore the same size clothes and shoes too. And when this came to Sara’s attention ( _she was the first to notice, because admittedly Sara had been anticipating the moment for quite some time_ ), she decided that their new game from then on would be playing twins.

( _She’d laughed. ‘We’ve been doing that for years.’ They have.   Sara had rolled her eyes. ‘Now we can do it_ right _!’_ )

So on the summer of the year 2000, they got the same haircut.

Laurel cut off the ends of her hair into a straight line and Sara chopped off almost half her length to just below the shoulders, to match her sister ( _who actually didn’t think the sacrifice was worth it. ‘Your hair is so pretty, and twins don’t have to look the same you know’ ‘Hair grows back, Laurel.’ Exactly that flippant. And there it went; all those pretty locks swept away by a hairdressers’ broom and Laurel never knew how Sara could cut them off like that and have no regrets_ ).There were days that they would wear the same colored clothes just to mess with people. From a distance, they might actually have passed for twins, with their dark hair an arrow-straight curtain around their faces and the same wide, toothy grins.

Tommy was the first to play along, as if they’d rehearsed it. He was the first to ask for pictures too, and the only one who got them, with Sara and Laurel kissing each of his cheeks, his stupid grin both cocky and happy. Laurel’s smile was made a little lopsided by how the whole thing made Oliver sullen for almost the whole day.

 _(The kiss she gave him at the end of the day was fun too. And the way he kept staring after her when she left, twice as much_ )

-

The fair wasn’t that far from the lake, so the Lances walked there, having parked their car halfway between the shore and the tents rising in the clearing, hugged by the forest. The girls walked ahead, stumbling and holding on to each other, laughing every once in a while about god knew what, shaking the sand from their sandaled feet every few yards.

And it was just then that the flimsy-looking clouds up in the sky let out, and a heavy warm rain started pouring down. Laurel yelped when the first few drops fell, heavy and warm, on her cheek and nose. Sara laughed at her – and then took off her cotton T-shit and shed her shorts even faster, and ran straight for the shore.

Laurel called Sara’s name almost in the exact same tone as their father did. Dinah laughed though, as she followed Sara’s wild run. Laurel contemplated a moment longer, looked at the smooth surface of the lake punctured by every drop of rain, the sun and gray clouds mixing, the rays of the setting sun breaking into rainbows in the distance… and then she rolled her eyes at herself, took off her own clothes and followed.  

She broke into the waves with a squeal and Dina mirrored her from the shore, tugging at her husband’s arm.

“Quentin, pass me the camera, quick!”

He did – having surrendered into a smile a lot sooner than he would like – as he often did to both his daughters’ whims. ( _much more often than he sometimes thought it safe_ )

Laurel and Sara floated on the water, their faces turned to the sky and their mouths open to catch the raindrops, arms and legs spread out, toes and bellies peaking from the warm waves every once and again. A thousand watery little touches from the sky made them laugh as the lake cradled them and they swam in the rain.

And it was a beautiful sunset.

-

Their games did lead them to one obnoxious situation or two, though.

Like that time after school when Sara had come around the back of the school yard to join Laurel’s group of friends, dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt, just like Laurel, making them look as alike as their smiles. It was cute, if a bit annoying, the way Sara kept trying to make friends of her friends. At least until one of her classmates muttered something about Sara trying too hard and them looking ‘all alike’ anyway.

Laurel had been so struck that for a moment she couldn’t even make sense of the words, let alone know what to do about them. And it didn’t matter in the end, because before she could do anything, Sara had punched Danny Thomson in the face.

“ _Sara_!”

The explosive nature of her sister’s temper was easier to respond to than Danny’s insult, for some reason. Laurel jumped between them and for a moment she didn’t know if she wanted to hold Sara back or hold Danny still and encourage her sister to hit him harder. Sara’s furious face turned to her then, and Laurel almost took a step back. Sara never looked less like a kid than when she was angry.

“You’re taking _his_ side?”

“I’m not taking anyone’s side!”

Beneath their shrill voices, Danny groaned. “I’ll get a black eye, you cra…”

Laurel turned to him so fast, her hair almost hit her in the face. “ _Shut up_ , Danny, or I’ll give you another!”

She didn’t even realize she’d yelled until the deep silence that fell after. Her glare must have been as hard as her voice, because he did shut his mouth and so did everyone else. But by the time Laurel turned back to her sister, Sara was already walking away so fast she was half running.

It didn’t take her long to catch up though.

“What is the _matter_ with you?” she hissed, walking fast to keep up. They almost ran into each other when Sara turned on her.

“What is the matter with _you_?” anger set her mouth into a snarl, hurt widened her eyes. “You _heard_ him!”

Laurel huffs, lips curled in disgust. As ever it had hurt, but honestly… she’d heard worse.

“Yes, I heard him. Punching him in the face doesn’t solve anything.”

Sara scowls, resumes her trek out of the school yard. “It shut him up, didn’t it?”

“I don’t give a shit about Danny freaking Thomson, or what he said!” Laurel snapped, grabbing her sister’s hand and turning Sara towards her. “You could end up to the principal’s office for that.”

Sara snatched her hand away. “I don’t care.” She took another step back. “And if you really cared, _you_ would have hit him.”

And Laurel didn’t know what to say to that either… because the part of her that weighted her stomach down, agreed.

-

They did eventually get back in each other’s good graces, slowly, as ever. Shoving what went wrong before behind them, so they could have space for each other. But Sara never tried to make her way into Laurel’s ground of friends again. From that day on she made her own, and they were as different as her sister’s as she could make them. 

* * *

  _ **Picture sources** : random Lana del Rey pic; xiao wen ju for the coveteur august 2015, Camila Massu/National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest._ 


	2. Ebb tide

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no warnings much for this chapter. some hints of laurel's nature, and how deeply she feels things, but that's about it.

_18; 16_

Tommy used to be her friend. She’d always thought so, but… something changed when she and Ollie became a thing. It wasn’t something she could explain, not even put into words. The shift between them was too subtle for them anyway. Words demanded certainty, concreteness; a name, a place. By contrast, her feelings were smoke between her fingers.

Or maybe nothing at all really changed. Maybe it was an awakening. An ever-present truth that had emerged from the depths of what had once been only subtle perception.

She can't be sure. She only knows what she feels. 

And the truth of what she feels _now_ is a certainty in knowing that Tommy has always belonged to Ollie first. She was her friend _too_. But always Ollie’s first.

She’d never say it like that, if Tommy himself hadn’t made it clear that that’s how he liked it. Tommy liked belonging – to people, to places; he was capable of belonging fully even to single moments. It was his secret. A little place of exile he carried inside himself. ( _the desperation, not the belonging. The belonging was a wishbone he’d swallowed once, and that had gotten stuck somewhere between his fourth and fifth rib._

 _‘See. I know you, Tommy. I know you better than he does.’_ )

( _Ollie had a secret too, but she’d never quite gotten at it. Maybe that had been why she liked him best. She’d wanted to tear him apart and study him like insides of a clock, understand the very root of him. She’d thought that was love. Why should she have? It was just like in the movies, the two of them_.)

She never made Tommy chose, obviously. Never would. But whether it was because she thought it a cruel thing to do, or because she knew she wouldn't be his first choice... well, that wasn’t clear. ( _and that was_ her _secret. The fear, not the uncertainty. The uncertainty was her nature._ )

It didn’t matter anyway.  At least so she told herself.

But for all that she considered it a non issue, she never gave confided her true thoughts to Tommy Merlyn again, after that day. In the depth of her mind and heart, he wasn’t hers anymore. And that too was a shift too imperceptible for words. She felt it in her heart and accepted it as such, without even admitting it to herself.

She loved Tommy. He’d been her friend since forever. Feeling that she was less important to him than Ollie and that he didn’t even seem to miss her as a friend, was the first lesson on loss Laurel Lance remembers taking.

As many things during those years, it went unsaid.

-

( _It shouldn't have. Unspoken history has a way becoming forgotten history, and forgotten history always repeats itself. And that’s how irony becomes the cruel carve of fate’s mouth smiling down at you, as you try to catch your breath on the floor_ )  

-

_18; 16_

They almost weren’t allowed to go to the carnival. Actually, Laurel wasn’t sure how they even got to get out of the house, seeing that she’d been convinced that the moment her parents got home from the meeting at their school, she was going to be grounded for life.

She was mentally preparing for a screaming match of epic proportions and listing in her head all the reasons why she was right. Sara on the other hand seemed… calm? It was as if she didn’t even care - and on one hand why should she? It’s not like she’d done anything wrong. But on the other, this was the third time that her teacher suggested in front of the headmaster that Sara might be cheating on her tests, and this could get way more serious than a participation in class issue.

As her mother calmly explained once their parents had made it home.

“Sara, baby…”

“I’m not _cheating_ on my tests.” She sounded so done with the whole thing, and it hadn’t even begun. Laurel wondered how many times she’d repeated that one sentence.

“We _believe_ you.” Their father hurried to say and Dinah nodded. “We do. But at least explain what’s going on to us.”

“Nothing is going on!” Nothing apart from her getting more upset by the minute. “I ask questions when I’m confused. I ask questions about things I don’t understand. I study. I get good grades. I actually _like_ math. I really don’t get where the problem is.”

“Honey, Miss Wheeler is very adamant that the level of participation you show and the nature of the questions you ask…”

Sara rolled her eyes. “So I ask stupid questions. So _what_? Is there a rule against being slow now? Does everyone have to snatch things outa the air to be considered a good student?”

Laurel cringed.                       

“Don’t raise your voice, Sara.” Their father warned and Sara pursed her lips. “And you’re not slow. So please, help us understand what’s going on.”

“There is nothing to understand, okay. Nothing is going on. I need some more explanations ever now and then and I’m sorry, okay, if I make things difficult on Miss Wheeler, but…”

“But explaining things to you is literally her _job_.” Laurel interceded calmly. “You don’t owe anyone an apology for anything.”

Sara held her eye for a moment, a tingle of gratitude in her eyes.

“This has nothing to do with you, you know that right?” Laurel continued, never looking away from Sara. “She’s just resentful cause she thinks she’s all that, and can’t figure out how your brain works. She doesn’t understand you, so she thinks _you’re_ the problem. And she’s petty too.”

“Insulting your teachers doesn’t mean you’re right, Laurel.” Her father reminded her, his voice as hard as his eyes. “But we’ll get to you in a minute.

Laurel wanted to roll her eyes but didn’t dare, cause she could tell both her parents were pissed at her just by the way they were sitting.

They mom tried a different angle. “Why don’t you participate more in class? That way you can change the teachers mind about you.”

Sara snorted. “Like that’ll happen. And I don’t participate cause Wheeler talks to me like I’m stupid.”

This wouldn’t be such a problem is math wasn’t so easy for her, Sara thought privately. She wondered if she should just take the easy way out and start making mistakes on purpose in the tests to get people off her back, cause keeping her grades honestly wasn’t worth the hassle.

Quentin sighed. “Your English Lit teacher had something to tell us too.”

Sara looked up quickly. A little too quickly, laurel thought, for it to be nothing.

“What?”

“She said the other kids are giving you trouble.” Dinah said softly, eyes brimming with compassion. It was Laurel’s turn to frown. Sara had never been someone easy to bully. She was more liable to get in a fight – no matter how much both their father and their coach forbid it – than take any shit form anyone.

Sara on the other hand, relaxed, instead of tensing further.

There was something going on here.

“They’re not.” Her sister said dismissively, almost as if it was funny. “Nobody in that school can ever give me trouble.”

“So your teacher is wrong then?”

Sara hesitated. She liked her Lit teacher, Laurel knew that.  So did her parents.

“She’s not wrong. She just assumes that I care what those idiots think. Or say. I don’t, and it doesn’t bother me.”

Laurel watched her parents share one of those loaded looks they sometimes used to talk to each other without words.

“You’ll have to spend two more years in that class baby. If your friends…”

“They’re not my _friends_ , mom. They’re just idiots. My friends don’t talk to me that way and that’s why they’re my friends.”

“Right, those delinquents.” Quentin murmured. Sara glared at him, crossing her arms over her chest

“Yeah dad. Those delinquents, who are actually nice to me and don’t talk to me like I’m retarded, yeah.”

“Your dad didn’t mean to insult anyone, baby.” Dinah said, giving a very meaningful look to her husband.

The expression on her father’s face was the closest thing to a pout Laurel had ever seen.

“Right. I don’t have to like them though.”

“No, you don’t. Mostly cause you don’t even bother getting to know them.” Sara bit back.

But before their father could say anything, Dinah saved the situation.

“Let’s not get off topic here.” She said with a clear note of warning in her voice, fingers tightening on her husband’s knee.

Sara sighed. “Honestly mom, I think _the topic_ has been exhausted.”

“Frankly baby, so do I.” Dinah admitted. “As long as you’re happy, healthy and doing well in classes, there really isn’t anything to say on the matter.”

“That’s not gonna stop Wheeler.” Sara mumbled as she pulled her knees up and folded herself on the corner of the couch, for the first time since the discussion started her body language letting on to how defensive she was about the whole thing.

“Well, that’s between her and her god of choice, I’m afraid.”

Sara smile and even Laurel couldn’t bite back a snort.

“Now…” both her parents turned to her and Laurel almost flopped boneless on the couch, she was suddenly so nervous. But she steeled herself, reminded herself that she’d done nothing wrong, and sat a bit straighter.

“Now let’s deal with the trouble _you’ve_ been causing.” Her father said looking directly at her.

“Nice not to be on the other end of that one, for once .” Sara mumbled. Their mother shot her a warning glance and Laurel wanted to pinch her, but her feet were too far to do it inconspicuously.

“What were you thinking?” Quentin asked, elbows resting on his knees and hands linked together. Great. Straight to the point then.

“I was thinking that someone who is incompetent and sexist enough to hinder my education, shouldn’t be part of my education.”

She resisted cringing. That had sounded less pretentious in her head.

“Save me the smart-ass comments. Your professor could lose his job.”

“Maybe he should learn how to do his job, then!”

She knew she’d crossed a line because her father’s face suddenly got very serious, his voice low and calm.

“You filed a petition to get a teacher suspended, Laurel. The man is going to be examined by the school board for educational malpractice.”

Laurel felt her fingertips starting to go numb. “I know what I did.”

“Do you? Do you _really_ understand what this means?”

She took a deep breath. Then another.

“He’s going to have his years of teaching examined. I’m going to be called on to give my reasons why I did what I did, and so are the other students who agreed to. If the board deems it reasonable, mister Edwards will be fired.” She clenched her hands in front of her lap. She’d learned the whole thing by heart. “I _know_ what I did.”

Her father’s lips thinned.

“Would you like to explain to me why?”

He was calm, but she knew it wasn’t real. His temper was just there beneath the surface and it made Laurel angry that even after taking it so far, he still wasn’t listening.

“I have. Multiple times. You never did anything about it.”

Quentin got up and started pacing behind the sofa he’d been sitting on.

“Not liking someone is no excuse for wrecking their lives, Laurel. I cannot believe you were ever so irresponsible.”

“Quentin, sit down.” Dinah said firmly, but he didn’t listen.

“Oh my god, you still don’t get it, do you?” the words burst out of her against her better sense. She’d promised herself she’d stay calm for this, but apparently that wasn’t an option. “He is rude and dismissive. He is overly demanding, completely arbitrary in the way he sets grades and he loves, _loves_ , making our lives a living hell. He’s a _bully_ – I have kids in my class who have anxiety attacks at the mere thought of being called on the blackboard during his class, because of him. Do _not_ tell me I’m exaggerating. It’s the truth.”

“Laurel, calm down baby.”

“I _am_ calm!” She was fucking fuming, but the answer was a reflex.  “He’s been telling us for four years that boys are just ‘ _natural’_ at math; he tells me and every other girl that it’s so _commendable_ that we try so hard…”

Her father’s eyes were full of disbelief. “And it isn’t?”

“It’s not a _compliment_ , dad! _God_!” Laurel snapped, louder than before.

Why didn’t he get it? The unfairness of it had burned at her for four years and she’d be damned if she left that hellhole of a school without doing something about it.

“Going behind someone’s back to try and get them fired is not the way to right any kind of wrong, Laurel.” Her mother reminded her.

“You think I got almost 200 people to sing their name on a piece of paper by sneaking around?”

“Well, your professor didn’t know, did he?” her father counted. This argument was getting more delusional by the second.

“Why should he have?” She honestly didn’t get it, at all. “I don’t owe him anything! None of us do.”

“So this is your way of getting even with the man then?”

“Quentin!”

Laurel was actually surprised at how much that hurt. It kinda put out the righteous anger in her a little bit and she started wondering if that had been really what it had looked like and that was actually the reason why so many signed. She’d thought she’d been doing the right thing, nd she still did thik that. she’d thought waiting until she was finally about to graduate would make it seem less personal, and more of a principle kind of thing.

She’d thought she was right.

 _I_ am _right. I am._

“This isn’t about getting even. I would have keyed and egged his car if I wanted to get even.”

Sara snorted under her breath. “And? Atta girl!”

Laurel glared at her.

“This is about the four years of high school of him terrorizing every student apart from the two or three he played favorites with, and nobody doing anything about it. And it’s about him _deserving_ to get fired, every other teacher in that school knowing it and _nobody_ doing _anything_ about it! Nobody deserved to have that kind of teacher!”

“Is that why you went over the administration and straight to the board?”

Laurel looked at her mother for a moment. “Yeah.”

She wasn’t exactly prod that she’d been a bit sneaky, but she wasn’t sorry either.

“That’s not playing it fair, Laurel.” Her mother told her gently, as if to make a point.

“I don’t care if it’s not fair. It’s _right_!”

Her mother sighed deeply but Laurel could tell that her mother wasn’t really angry. She’d been so calm throughout that if Laurel hadn’t know better, she might have thought her mother secretly approved.

“She gets that from you.” Dinah said as she stood and smoothed down her skirt. “ _You_ handle it.”

Laurel snorted softly. “Handle it? Wow, thanks mom.”

Dinah raised a single eloquent eyebrow. “Don’t push it, young lady.”

Laurel bit her lip.

Her father came to sit by her side and he looked a lot more calm now. Calm enough to see that beneath that, he’d been worried all along.

“You realize that if the board decides your professor is perfectly fit to teach, they’re going to be taking you up under scrutiny next. They could make a note on your behavior. You could not graduate because of this.”

“I know.” Laurel said softly, looking away from him. She’d thought long and hard abut it before putting together that petition. “So what, just cause it has consequences, I shouldn’t have done it?”

“Considering the consequences of an action is always the smart thing to do, baby.”

“I did.” She fiddled with a thread on her sleeve. “Nobody would do it before because if Edwards found out, he’d become even more impossible. Nobody would have signed petition, let alone put in the testimony with the board. And nobody else wanted to be the first _now,_ because of what you said, so…”

She heard her father sigh and for the first time felt sorry for him, cause he sounded utterly exhausted.

“So you did?”

“Yeah. So I did.”

What more was there to say, really?

Her father seemed to agree because he sighed so heavily she thought he might be left out of breath, and then left without a world, seeming to ooze disappointment behind him like a stench.

And Laurel was left sitting there, feeling sad and annoyed and ashamed and without fully understanding why.

-

They weren’t grounded, for some foreign reason most probably explained through their mother, and ended up going to the carnival anyway. But it was funny though, in the end, Sara was the one that dragged Laurel out of the house, instead of it being the other way around like Laurel had anticipated. 

She’d spent the last week and a half trying to convince Sara to join her and Ollie this time, and Sara had said ‘no’ in all ways no could be said. But when push came to shove and Laurel was about to call Ollie and cancel on him, Sara had stopped her, ordered her off the bed and into jeans, because they had a carnival to go to. Laurel hadn’t wanted to. She hadn’t wanted to move from the bed for a week and couldn’t even say why. Even though she hadn’t fought wither parents like she thought she would, she felt emptied of her insides anyway.

She hated feeling like she’d disappointed her dad. He was wrong damn it!

So why did she feel like wet shit?

Didn’t matter – wet shit or not, Sara had her way.

Ollie came to pick them up on his brand new red convertible and Laurel pretended not to notice the look her father threw at him.

Sara laughed her way into the back seat. “Nice ride, Ritchie Rich.”

“So hop on, girly girl.”

Her sister flipped him the bird for his trouble, but Laurel couldn’t help the smile. She leaned into him and took a kiss. He winked at her.

She was already feeling better.

Ollie had a way of doing that. he was light, where she was serious, easygoing where she was hard-hitting and opinionated. He was indiscriminately fun, and liked being around people who were as fun… which sometimes made her wonder just why he liked her so much, exactly. But then again there must be a reason, she’d tell herself, because for a guy who never took anyone or anything seriously, he looked at her like her every word mattered. It made her feel present, the way he sometimes looked at her. Like she was the only person in the room.

Ollie had a way of doing that, too. He gave everything he had – for an hour. Laurel hesitated to call it cruel… but the ease with which he forgot about people scared her sometimes.

And yet they’d stubbornly been in each other lives since forever. It meant something.

( _It meant she was special, she could feel it. It made love bloom inside her like a flower, warm and soft. She was his exception. People who matter are always the exception, right?_ )

They spent an hour or so walking around and trying the different games. Laurel stood by as Sara challenged Ollie for a stuffed animal and a night-long supply of cotton candy, and raised a knowing eyebrow when the game she picked was shooting the ducks off the stands.

“Kinda unfair don’t you think?” She whispered as Ollie lined his shot.

“So what?”

Laurel rolled her eyes. When Ollie took his shot… and promptly missed, she had to bite her lip not to laugh.

“Aw, too bad.” Sara whined, so fake that Laurel elbowed her in the ribs.

“Just getting started.” Ollie countered good humouredly.  

“Come on, Ollie, don’t listen to her.” Laurel encouraged, though she knew he could tell she was a breath away from laughing at him.

“Yeah, show us what you got pretty boy.”

“Leave him alone, Sara.”

“Yeah, stop trying to distract me, brat.”

Her sister laughed, loud and full, the way she always did. “Oh, don’t blame me just cause you can’t aim with both hands and a map.”

“I can aim just fine.” He said, sounding a bit put off… and then missed again. 

Sara jumped forward the moment he put the toy rifle down. “My turn!”

She knocked every duck off the rack, easily. Ollie was left speechless and Sara very smug. She threw the toy rifle at Laurel, who caught it easily.

“Cop dad, didn’t I ever tell you?” She teased as she said as she spread her feet and aimed.

“I feel betrayed.” Though his voice let on to him feeling amused more than anything.

Sara snorted. Laurel took her shot. The tin duck had no chance. And that’s how the Lance sisters won themselves two huge white unicorns and an infinite supply of cotton candy for the night, of which Sara took shameless advantage of.

“So your dad taught you how to shoot too? What, is he grooming you for the army or something?”

Laurel smiled. “Nah. More like exercising his paranoia.”

“Like he did when he wanted you and Sara to learn how to snap a dude’s neck with your thighs?”

Laurel laughed then. He liked imagining things about her, sometimes, and it was either funny or infuriating.

“I don’t know how to do that, Ollie. And that’s illegal, by the way. I don’t think there’s a single gym in Starling that has a permit for teaching lethal martial arts, actually.” She added then, more thoughtfully.

“She hates it anyway,” Sara piped in, licking her fingers. “She totally wanted to drop out a couple of years ago.”

Ollie turned to her. “Why?”

Laurel just shrugged. “I like the exercise just fine, but it was getting boring. And I don’t really get off on violence.”

“Also cause I am so much better than her at it.” Sara said around a mouthful of sugar.

Laurel raised an eyebrow the way their mother did. “What? Violence?”

Sara’s smile was all teeth. “That too.”

“So why didn’t you?” Ollie asked as he threw her arm over her shoulders and pulled her closer. “Quit, I mean.”

Laurel shrugged. “I took up boxing instead of dropping out completely.”

“Right, you train with Ted Grant, I knew that.”

He liked Ted Grant – he’d come around to her gym just to meet him once, since Ted wasn’t that big on public appearances. He hadn’t liked Ollie a single bit, but Laurel hadn’t paid that too much mind. Ted didn’t really like anyone.

“That, and it makes her ass look great, so…”

“ _Sara_!” Laurel’s shriek made Sara sprint ahead to get out of the range of her sister’s arms. Ollie laughed and held laurel back from going after her.

“What, she’s right.”

“Not the point, Ollie!”

But he just laughed.

-

Sara left them to join her own group of friends not a long time after, shoving her unicorn in Ollie’s arms with a disarming smile.

“Hey.”

Laurel looked up and straight into Ollie’s eyes. She’d been quite for a while and hadn’t even noticed, a thin layer of condensation on the glass of her milkshake gathering into little droplets and sliding down to her hands.

“You seem sad.”

Laurel just shrugged. She looked at her black and white milkshake for some moments more before telling him what the deal was. She couldn’t tell him why she felt like she’d made a mistake. She hadn’t made one. She was sure of it.

It was the look on her father’s face that kept gnawing at her.

Ollie sat back on his chair. “Why do you even care? It’s none of our business anymore, we’re leaving.”

She hadn’t known what to say to that either.

“I just do.”

Anything more than that would have exhausted her beyond her limit.

Ollie nodded, bit the inside of his cheek.

“Ok, lets do something fun.”

She bit back a sigh. Of course.

“Like what?” it was easier to play along.

“Anything. Anything you want, anywhere you want.”

Laurel smiled and this time she meant it.

“Anything at all?” she lowered her voice, it was almost a little challenge between them. His eyes twinkled. He nodded.

“Let’s go flying.”

And she felt so self-satisfied, because that was sure to put a damper on his ever present need for jumping to the next best thing, but if possible, his smile got even wider. It was only them that Laurel remembered that he was a very rich guy who had a penchant for spending his mony in distinctively stupid ways.

“Joke!” She warned, but his smile never faltered. Oh shit. “Joke, joke, _joke_! _Ollie_!”

But he’d already gotten up and didn’t stop – he took her hand and pulled her with him instead and at some point Laurel started laughing.

“Where are we going?”

They walked until they reached the edge of the carnival, near the beach, and walked until they hit the soft sand. And then he turned to her, that mischievous smile sending a thrill up her spine.

“Now what?”

His hands fell on her hips and he pulled her towards him.

“Hop on.”

She knew what he meant but met his excitement with skepticism. “Oh, no way.”

“Yes _way_ , come on!” He pulled her up and she had no choice but to wrap her legs around his hips. She wasn’t particularly shy, but didn’t like crossing certain lines either.

“Wanna add public indecency to your record?” she asked as she wound her hands around his shoulders to steady herself.

“Are you offering?”

She never knew when he was like this, if he was joking or utterly serious.

“In your dreams maybe.”

“Oh, in my dreams for sure.”

She pinched his shoulder hard enough to make him feel it, and he laughed. And then started spinning… and she finally understood what he wanted to do, and laughed freely for the first time since the night had begun.

She let go of his shoulders completely and let her spin them both around, laughing.

It did feel like flying.

-

Maybe it happened too quickly the first time. She’s not sure. Doesn’t know any better. She remembers no reason behind it, no real push. It just happened. She doesn’t remember if it was because she wanted it to or because he did and she wanted to give, give give. She remembers being nervous enough that she shook from head to toe. But she remembers wanting, too.

His room didn’t feel so big in the dark, with only a small yellow reading light on in the distance. They kissed for hours, until her lips were sore and his were red, and his hands were all over, just like hurts. They took it slow, soft and slow, the way she liked everything else, until she was scissoring her legs together and he brushed between them, so softly, until she came apart.

She was embarrassed after, so she chose to kiss and kiss until she could look him in the eye and not want to shut her eyes tight.

He’s been her first in so many ways. Maybe that’s strange, but she’s always felt like it was the way it was meant to be. He was her first real kiss ( _but not her first_ kiss _, kiss_ ). The first person she slow danced with, went to a party with. Got incredibly drunk with – though maybe those last two don’t count cause Tommy was there too.

Lots of firsts, anyhow. She couldn’t imagine being that close and that naked with anyone else by that point.

It hurt some, but not as much as she expected; it took some getting used to and it was nice, sure, but what they’d been doing before had felt better. She didn’t want to be selfish though, and she so wanted to please him too. he told her he loved her that night, and Laurel’s heart had dropped all the way down to her toes. Slipped right out of her, fresh out of her hands, unbruised, untouched, and fell somewhere beneath the bed.

She didn’t even feel the loss of it. It felt like she’d jumped from a high place and straight into warm water and all she’d wanted was for him to say it again, just like that, skin to skin and so close not even silence could stand between them.

_Say it again for me, ‘cause I love the way it feels when you tell me I’m the only one who blows your mind. Say it again for me. It’s like the whole world stops to listen when you tell me you’re in love._

_Say it again_ _**[1]** _ _._

-

_19; 17_

He does say it, but it never quite tastes the same as that first time. Sometimes it’s like he’s saying something else with those words.

There are things to him that she doesn’t understand. A loneliness that she wants to dig her fingers in, put her arms around. But he doesn’t always let her do that. A sadness that she recognizes sometimes, but that he refuses to part with.

He’s a strange person, Ollie. But she doesn’t begrudge him that. She’s known plenty of fantastic strange people. She respects weirdness in everyone – the best people she knows always seem to be those that walk at an angle, a bit tilted against the wind, just enough to make her worry.

There are things in him that leave her cold and hollow though. ( _the way he changes, how he comes different versions of himself for different people: his mother, his father, his sister… her. The ease with which he smiles when his eyes are so empty. The way he lets go_.) Things that she wishes she could talk about to someone who wouldn’t dismiss him as a spoiled asshole, even if he can be that too. Sometimes she tries to – with Tommy, but it’s an exercise in futility. Tommy and Ollie have become a closed circle. Sometimes it feels like they guard each other from her like she were their enemy.

She knows she’s being stupid.

Doesn’t matter.

-

She doesn’t remember how it happened. What was different. It’s not like they’ve never done this before.

She’s not a party animal, but she does go to the ones Tommy throws, cause Tommy is her friend, and no matter where is the party, when he knows she’s coming, Tommy has a way of stocking all her favorite food, and her favorite drinks, and all the music that she likes.

She hops on a train, whirls at home like a tornado, changes into her party gear before she can chicken out and then takes a cab for the Queen Mansion. The look on Ollie’s face when he sees her in those shorts and the fishnets beneath them is worth the trouble. The black tank is almost half a corset and shows way more cleavage than she usually does so the whole effect is like looking at a stranger in the mirror, but Laurel is feeling better about it by the second.

She hugs her boyfriend and kisses him right there on the doorstep without caring who sees them. She missed him. And judging by the way he holds her so close her back arches into him, he missed her too. And then when Tommy yells her name from further into the house, Laurel untangles herself from Ollie’s arms and smiles wide at her best friend.

She hasn’t seen him in almost three months. She laughs when she hugs him, the strength of it surprising him a bit. He stumbles before he remembers to hold her back.

They gather together side by side, a three-pointed circle, and talk through smiles, over one another. The first months away from each other seemed so strange, to people who’d always been a fixture in each other’s lives. Ollie and Tommy had been together though, but when they sit at both sides of her on the couch, she doesn’t feel left out.

She doesn’t really remember who she meets and who they speak to. She remembers introducing Joanna to some of her friends, the drinks in her hand, Ollie’s kisses on her neck, her shoulder, Tommy making her laugh so hard she spilled the beer on her thighs. No big deal.

They end up in Ollie’s room. They always do this, the two of them, sometimes with Laurel too: a party within a party. Between one drink and another, Laurel tries to ask Ollie what had happened and why he’d dropped out of college, but his wince makes her think better of it. They keep to light things and laughter. Why not?

She’d missed this and hadn’t even realized it. Missed the familiarity of their company.

She climbs on the couch, snuggles her face in Ollie’s stomach, puts her bare feet up on Tommy’s lap and lets their voices and chuckles lull her to hazy sleep.

She likes her life, likes where it seems to be headed. She likes her boyfriend and the way he kisses her, how he misses her. But sometimes… sometimes moments like this come along when she feels safe and loved in a way that has nothing to so with sex, or drama or the strings they’ve woven around each other. They could be five year olds snuggling on the same bed, the three of them together like a promise against solitude, and the beauty of it was in the innocence, so rare. And there is nothing about the simplicity of these moments that she would change. She can breathe, and wish for nothing. Nothing.

-

It never lasts.

-

There are times when Sara misses Laurel, after her sister goes away to college, but she feels no shame in admitting that it’s easier to love her when they’re not shoved so close together all the time. She’s doing well at Stanford, her parents say, and Sara believes them. Why shouldn’t she? Everyone likes Laurel.

Sara can understand why – Laurel is not that hard to like, if you only know her from afar. It gets harder when you know her better. She’s judgmental as fuck if you don’t fit _her_ idea of how shit is done, but she doesn’t seem to realize it. It’s impossible not to love her once you know her best, though. But at that point, hating her is also pretty easy.

Maybe that’s just a sister thing. Laurel feels that way too about Sara, no matter how hard she denies it. Maybe it’s impossible not to hate someone once you truly love them down to their toes and split hairs.

Or maybe Sara and Laurel are just bad at the whole sister thing. Sara doesn’t know. She mostly doesn’t care either.

She’s stopped wondering what that makes her a while ago.

Out of everyone who claims to like her sister, half don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about anyway, and out of that half that kinda, maybe do, Sara is the one who knows Laurel best. She’s nice, her sister. Straightforward enough to be thought of as honest, but somehow manages it without offending anyone. Something Sara never managed to do. Laurel does lots of stuff Sara never managed to do. She has lots of friends, her sister, gets off on being nice.

Sometimes Sara wonders if she just does it so that other people will _think_ she’s nice. The nicest girl in the whole world. If _that’s_ what Laurel really gets off on.

Maybe. Maybe not. That’s not her truth anyway. Sara knows her sister’s truth: tolerant and giving to all that need it, for sure. But very few of those that Laurel calls friends know what's beyond that first wall of bland niceness.  

They don’t feel the impact, you see, because Laurel pads her roadblocks with the softness of politeness and her 100 watt smile; with tolerance - _if you think like her_ \- and flexibility. That’s why nobody ever feels it when they slam against her sister’s walls. They bounce right back and Laurel helps them up and by the time they're back on their feet, they’ve forgotten they ever hit anything at all.  

Sometimes Sara thinks it's genius. Sometimes that it's hypocrisy.  

Other times she wonders if her brilliant sister is ever lonely, but the thought is fleeting.

fleeting.  

-

_20; 18_

Sara huffs, lips thin with anger, as she whips her bleached hair into an angry bun. It makes Laurel wince, how hard she pulls at it.

“I _talk_ to him all the time! He just never  _listens_  to me! I might as well be speaking Chinese for all he understands about me.”  

Laurel holds back the sigh of frustration, runs a hand through her hair instead. God, her sister and her father could both be so _aggravating_ sometimes. They had a stubbornness that was – ironically, in Laurel’s opinion – completely identical. Sometimes Laurel thought that if Sara and their father weren’t so alike, they would be able to get along better. But wishing didn’t change the fact that they were like a pair of old mules, the both of them. And neither was willing to make way for the other. They just insisted the other give way.

 “That’s because… Ugh, come on, Sara,  _try_! Try to talk to him the way you talk to me.”  

Sara makes a face. “Yeah right.”  

And the mere tone of her words tells Laurel that that has been slotted right into the ‘ _never fucking happening_ ’ category in her sisters brain.   

Laurel persists.

“Tell him the things you tell me, but… in the kind of way that he might find easy to understand you. Understand what you want.”  

“He doesn’t care what I want.” Sara mumbles.  

“That’s not true, Sara…” Laurel’s tone was soft, plaintive. It hurt, because she knew that Sara wasn’t making this up just ‘cause. It showed in her face: she believed every word she was saying and it hurt Laurel to think Sara felt so alone. It made her feel utterly helpless.

“It’s just that, whenever you talk to him you get so angry, and that’s ok,” she hurried to add. “But you sound like you’re accusing him and it puts dad on the defensive.”

Sara lost track of her emotions even more easily than Laurel did, and when Laurel held back when she got angry, Sara let loose, almost gleefully so.

But Laurel’s tone of voice seemed to annoy Sara even more. She ripped her third T-shirt off, threw it on the bed and started rummaging in her closet again. Laurel bit her lip. Sara never cared what she put on, usually. She only got indecisive about it when she was starting to get irritated, but trying to hold back.   

“You can’t always do things your way only and expect it to work out.”

“And why not! Is dad’s way the only way now?”

“No.” Laurel takes a breath. “But if you want people to understand you, you have to try to speak their language, you know.”

Her sister whips around to face her, every line of her face rearranged by anger, but her eyes wide and shiny.

“Look, I’m not like you, ok. I know only _one_ language – _this_ language – and in _this_ language, our dearest father seems to be deaf to anything I might have to say, so just _stop pushing_!”   

“I’m not _pushing_!” Laurel snaps back. “I’m trying to make you see what’s not working.”   

“Well it’s not exactly helping, Laurel!”  

“You’re not exactly  _trying_ , Sara.”

Sara purses her lips hard and turns away, almost stepping all the way into her closet, as if to physically hide from the argument and laurel sighs.

It’s not like she likes talking about this any more than her sister does. Whenever she and her father she feels like dying inside. It’s not like Laurel’s fights with her dad – Sara and dad get personal. They get nasty sometimes, hurt each other. And it freaking hurts her too, damn it! And Sara might try to hide how deeply she is affected by acting all nonchalant and dismissive, but Laurel can tell just from the tenor of her voice when she talks about it – ever so shaky, just a little bit lower than usual – that she is emotional and almost close to tears.   

There were some things – not many, just a precious few and never-changing list of things – that manage to bring Sara to tears in a moment, if an argument even so much as touches on them. And she never cries in front of dad, or mom for that matter. But sometimes, when Laurel tries to get her sister to open up and they end up talking about their dad, or about school and Sara’s future, her sister’s eyes get misty immediately. Laurel knows the corners of her sisters mind so well by now that she can see this coming before a topic even starts _._    

Most people think Sara is such a mysterious labyrinth, with her high cheekbones and aggressive looks, platinum blonde hair and mischievous smiles. They think she’s so unpredictable and Laurel knows Sara likes to be thought of that way. To Laurel though, her sister is so transparent, that her mystery air is almost an inner joke between them. ( _Laurel secretly loves and envies the effect Sara had on people, how dumbfounded she leaves them. She loves watching it happen; loves sharing a knowing smile with her over it, like a secret whispered in their heads from all the way across the room_.)

She emerged from her closet in a pair of jeans and a white tank top.

“I told him yesterday that I want to apply to the Police Academy while I wait for the results of my applications – to soften it, right? Laurel-style.” She scoffs, and Laurel tries very hard not to take it personally. “And he started going on about how I shouldn’t waste time doing something I don’t want to do.”

Sara’s voice is low, as if she’s speaking to herself. Her chuckle and the way her head tips back makes Laure think her sister is blinking back tears, and her head squeezes, despite her annoyance. 

“As if I haven’t repeated to him, over and over that I have exactly _zero_ interest in college. But no, when it’s something _he_ thinks is right, it becomes something I want to do, I just don’t know it yet. It becomes something I can’t decide for myself, cause I’m too young. The hypocrisy of the man is amazing.”  

Laurel flinches. “Keep your voice down.”  

Sara her anger to her. “ _I don’t care_.” And as her sister’s voice gets even louder, the scowl on Laurel’s face deepens.  “Let them all hear. I don’t give a fuck.”  

“Then say it to his face! Not behind a closed door.”   

There is something about talking of someone – anyone, let alone their father – behind their back like this, that really makes Laurel uncomfortable. Maybe it is the unfairness of it. He is not there to protect himself and they were teaming up against him.   

Sara’s smile cuts like glass. “Like I haven’t. At least I’m honest.”  

That stings. “What’s _that_ supposed to mean?”  

“You know what I mean. Like _you’ve_ ever fought with him!”  

“I haven’t because we don’t disagree.”  

“You haven’t, because you’re his ‘ _perfect girl_ ’.” Sara mocked. And this time Laurel does take it personally. “He has no trouble listening to you – you always tell him exactly what he wants to hear.”  

Laurel feels her spine going rigid, the first tendrils of anger starting to thread through her.

“I say what _I_ need to say, in a way that doesn’t sound like I’m telling him he’s a failure as a father. That you can’t do that is not my fault, Sara.”  

“That’s not what I…”

“It’s what he hears. And frankly, it’s what I hear too.”

Sara’s bottom lips shakes, but she bites it and glares.

“Why should I have to do that, anyway? Why should I have to change what I am? It’s not like I’ll ever be what he wants me to be. I’ll never be you.”

“ _Sara_!”

“You know it’s true. Stop defending him, god! Be honest, for once!”

Laurel hisses as if Sara just slapped her.

“I _am_ being honest. You on the the other hand, are being melodramatic.” That’s a low blow, and Laurel regrets it immediately, but doesn’t apologize.

Sara’s eyes burn. She stands straight in all her small height and she looks ready to fight.

“If that were true, you’d tell him how much you hate it that he thinks you’re so perfect. Don’t you?”

She does. She’s not about to admit it though.

“So what’s your big plan? Do something you hate doing and be miserable just so you can rub in his face how he failed with you, later?” It  doesn’t sound remotely like something Sara would do… much…  

Her sister snorts. “Gimme a break. I’m not the one who plans on spending my whole life around mom and dad.”  

Laurel purses her lips. “hey, I happen to like this city.”  

“Yeah I know. You _love_ fixer-uppers.” Sara mumbles. “Like that boyfriend you keep leashing around proves.”

“Hey, be nice.”

Sara’s eyes flash.

“I’m never nice for no reason, it’s like you don’t know me or something. What do you even see in him? He’s so  _not_  your type.”  

“Oh, I have a type?”  

“Smart, for one. Takes a lot to keep up with you and you are judjy of people who can’t.”  

“I am not.”  

“Yeah you are.”  

“I’m _not_  judgmental.” Though in the back of her head she’s thinking, ‘oh god, is that really what I sound like?’ “I’m… opinionated.”  

Sara raises her hands in mock appeasement.

“Not saying there’s anything wrong with that, but you can be an avalanche, Laurel, and Queen is just so…”  

Sara seems to struggle with the word she’s looking for. Then she settles for ‘slow’.

Laurel frowns and this time she means it. That’s not funny. “Ollie may be my boyfriend…”  

“May?”  

“But he’s been my _friend_ for a lot longer. Don’t think you can insult him like that in front of me.” 

Sara snorts. “Geez, chill.”

“And he’s not _slow_. He’s actually really smart. He just likes to keep people’s expectations of him low, so that he doesn’t have to deal with them.”  

“Sounds like a lazy douchebag with a silver spoon to me.”  

Laurel bit her lip. Ok so, worst case scenario, it’s not like she was wrong. But there was so much more to Olive than that.

“He has his own issues. His family’s not so great and his dad’s an asshole.”

“We all have issues.” Sara says absentmindedly. “That’s no excuse to be a dick.”

“Nothing’s an excuse to be a dick.” Laurel repeats, fixing her sister’s eyes in the mirror. “Not even for you.”

Sara smiles. Winks.    

“Don’t I know it. I still think you keep him around cause he makes you feel good about yourself. But then again, so does he.”  

Laurel’s face falls and so does her stomach. “What do you mean?”  

Sara just shrugs. She seems to have caught herself, because without meaning to, Laurel gets very seriously all of a sudden, and when that happens they act like the other’s barometer – the smallest change is always perceived.  And Sara can feel it that this is dangerous territory, so she backs off.  

“Nothing, never mind.”

“No, please enlighten me.”

“I said never mind okay.” Sara repeats, harsher this time. “It’s not like I’m one to talk when it comes to boyfriends, anyway.”

Laurel sighs, but drops it. All too willingly, maybe. “You do that on purpose.”

“Hey, I like bad boys. They have flair.”

“Bit too much of it maybe. The last time someone had ‘ _flair’,_ you ended up at the station.”

“You’re never gonna drop that are you?” Sara asks, real anger vibrating in her tone. So Laurel dropped it.

“I don’t get why you feel this so hard anyway. It’s not like he can _make_ you do anything.” Nobody can make Sara do anything she doesn’t want to do and they both know it.

Sara’s eyes are wide when she turns to her. “Ollie?”

“What? No. _Dad_.”

“Oh.” And then she huffs, tired. “Can we not get back to this?”

“What, it’s true. In the end, you’ll just do what you want to.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Sara admits ruefully as she undoes her hair and combs her fingers through it. “I just don’t want to spend my whole life falling short of someone’s else’s idea of me.”

Laurel feels a surge of surprising anger climb up her throat. She wants to grab Sara and shake her hard in that moment

“So why beat it around the bush? Jus…”  

“Oh my god, it’s like you don’t listen either! I told him I don’t even want to go to college and he just _ignored_ me! Flat out!”   

“But if you…”  

Sara had finally had it. This time when she yells, she flushes with anger. “Stop telling me how to change.  _I’m_  not the one who needs to change!”  

“Well I’m not taking to _dad_ right now. I’m talking to _you._ And I’m trying to get you t stop wallowing in your anger and do something to fix things.”  

“Maybe I don’t want you to, ever thought about that?” she challenges. “Maybe I just want to wallow with my sister, without feeling like I’m this _project_ to you.”  

“Oh for fucks sake Sara.”  

The silence that falls between them is  heavier this time. Laurel knows she is getting angry and that she should just leave it, or leave the room, but she can’t.

But she’s just so… _angry_! She always does this. She refuses to get along and then blames everyone else for not knowing her and not getting her and all that bullshit. She’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“You know sometimes I think that you enjoy being misunderstood. That it’s a great way to prove you’re right, and that everyone just doesn’t get you.”   

Hurt flickers in Sara’s eyes very briefly.   

“Right. I’m just playing the victim. Great. Awesome. Anything else?”

Laurel sighs. Yeah she regrets that. But she still thinks she’s right.   

“Just tell him that you don’t want to go to college. Easy as that. end of the line.”  

Sara stands there in the middle of her room, staring at Laurel like she has no idea who she’s looking at.

“God with all your smarts, there are some things you just don’t get, aren’t there? I know you love dad, Laurel, I love him too, but the man doesn’t _care_ what I want for my life. And he cares what _you_ want for yours, because it fits with his idea of what you’re _supposed_ to want. Mine doesn’t, so he ignores it.”  

Laurel sighs, flops back on the bed and turns so she can look at Sara.

“And you’re what? Just gonna sit there and take it? Doesn’t sound like you.”  

“What else am I gonna do? Run away?”  

“Just tell him ‘no’!” Laurel repeated for the hundredth time.  

Sara’s smile is a small bitter thing. “You mean like you do? And here I was thinking the word ‘no’ was something you only reserved for me.”  

Laurel throws one of those stupid stuffed animals Sara keeps on her bed at her sisters head. “Stop trying to change the subject.”  

Sara catches the fluffy rabbit and throws him in the trash.

“We’re right on the subject. The subject here is the fact that I feel like I have nobody, and nobody seems to give a shit.”  

“That’s not fair, Sara.”  

She starts buckling up her boots.

“I don’t care if it’s fair. It’s the truth. Whenever I ask _you_ to do something together, you always say no, find some excuse. I mean, after the hundredth time, a girl gets a complex Laurel. It’s like you’d rather do anything for anyone, rather than anything with me.”  

“Sara, you’re my baby sister and I love you but we’re different. We don’t like doing the same things…”

“You never say no to Joanna.”

“Joanna doesn’t want to go out to a different party every other day. And besides, that’s different. Joanna is just a friend. She wouldn’t get it if I never went out with her, she’d think I was avoiding her or something. You’re supposed to understand.”

“I understand just fine.” Sara snaps. “You take me for granted cause I’m your sister and Joanna is ‘we have company, straighten up the house’.”

“I don’t take you for granted!” The mere idea was ridiculous. As if it wasn’t Sara who was passably polite to everyone and their mother but utterly ripped through Laurel ever time, and called it ‘ _I have no philters, get used to it’_. “You take _me_ for granted!”

“Excuse _me_!”

“And so what if I don’t want to go along with you every time you feel like doing something? Do you even realize how random you are most of the time? Or that 12 am is not the right time to go get ice cream in the park?”  

Sara groans and rolls her eyes. “That was _one time_. And that’s not evne the point anyway. The point is that you’re Miss ‘no problem’ for everyone but me!”

“That’s not true.”

“Oh my god!”

“It’s _not_.” Laurel insist headedly. “You always wanna do something and I’m always more comfortable staying at home and that’s why it feels like I always refuse you, but I don’t. And just because sometimes…”

“ _Sometimes_?!”  

“Yes _, sometimes_. Sometimes I say no that doesn’t make it selfish and I don’t appreciate you trying to guilt me into doing stuff I don’t want to do.”  

Sara’s at the door and Laurel knows just by the look on her face that this discussion is about to be over. And though it might have sounded stupid to anyone else, it doesn’t feel that way to her.

It probably doesn’t feel like that to Sara either.

“Well guilting you into it is the only way to get you to spend time with me, so what am I supposed to do? And you saying ‘no’ may not be selfish Laurel, but I’m still left on my own so you know what, I don’t care.”  

The door slams hard behind her and for a moment laurel wants to run after Sara and pull her hair hard. It’s so fucking important to Sara to have the last word that she will walk out on you without giving a fuck.

And then the next she wants to curl in a ball and cry.

The guilt and anger Laurel is left with is so heavy that she doesn’t think she can get up from the bed for a while. The whole of it is an ugly gnawing thing that makes her feel both angry and miserable by turns.

She fucking _hates_ being manipulated like this no matter what the circumstance. She hates herself for allowing her petty preferences to dictate her actions with Sara, hates herself for making her sister feel lonely, hates the way Sara is so utterly unapologetic over throwing that guilt in her face to change her behavior, not caring how it hurt as long as it got results. Hates that her sister feels like she was all alone.  

Sisters aren’t supposed to feel lonely. Isn’t that what having a sister is all about? What good is she, if not for that.   

She drags herself off the bed, postpones the civil rights essay she wanted to get started on and starts planning.

When Sara comes home, the skintight mini-dress Laurel is wearing is an admittance of guilt. Sara’s little smile is that thing she does with her eyebrows is acknowledgement of her own. The leather jacket Laurel throws her is the apology.

Sara takes it, and changes fast into something skimpy that would have a vain pop on their father’s forehead.   

They dance all night, just the two of them and a couple of casual friends. No close friends tonight, no boyfriends – nothing to distract them from each other.

Sara almost breaks some dude’s wrist, Laurel punches in the face some idiot that tried to grab her ass. Sara’s full-belly laugh as they ran out of the place was worth it.  

They buy ice-cream and walk by the peer. Sit down on the wooden planks and talk for hours about things that later they probably won’t even remember. And important things.   

Laurel falls asleep on her bed exhausted, body and soul. It was worth it.   

-

Why did they break up that first time? It’s a question Laurel doesn’t remember the answer to, not always. Sometimes she gets fed up on his bullshit and can’t stand the sight of him. Sometimes it feels like they get bored of each other.

Why do they always come back to each other? She can’t explain it!

Is this what running in circles feels like?

She has a soft spot for him, that’s true. Tender as a bruise. It invites touch. She likes to indulge in the ache. Doesn’t quite comprehend how love could feel any other way.

It doesn’t feel like love, if it’s not like this.

Everyone’s reality is subjective, isn’t it?

 _I missed you. I’m sorry_. All things he likes saying. He looks like he means them. He looks like he needs her.

There is something perversely satisfying in seeing the trail of disasters he leaves behind every time they’re not together. He was a disaster building up and waiting to hit the shore, and she was so sick, sick to the _bone_ with thoughts of being someone’s steady ground. There was something so seductive about that notion.

It’s everywhere, isn’t it? _I’ll make you matter. I’ll be your reason_.

It’s romantic…

All the while an honest voice inside her that sounds a lot like Sara, whispers other things: _there’s something wrong inside you, girl, to have such a soft spot for broken things_. Something selfish maybe. She _wants_ to be the one to make it better. Fix it for him.

That too is her secret: she so wants to be needed. She so wants to be essential. A place, a purpose. Somewhere beyond herself.

And who better at needing her than a human disaster?

* * *

[1] Marie Digby

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so here's the thing: i posted this story because i was at a low point personally-wise and needed something positive in my life, and usually, by way of fic and writing is how i do that. but the thing is, this is the kind of story that is supposed to be read as a block, because it's very unfair to take laurel's story to the places i want to take it, and make you guys wait for something trivial as an update.   
> bottom line, i will update the whole thing when i'm done. so this story is temporarily on a kind if hiatus, i guess? temporary. I'm not going to start posting until i have a full first draft, and all i need to do before each update is edit a bit.   
> thank you for all the feedback so far. i hope you guys like the rest


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